763 Textiles and Fashion. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84569-931-4.00030-1 Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. CHAPTER THE MARKETING OF FASHION 30 K. McKelvey Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK LEARNING OBJECTIVES At the end of this chapter, you should be able to: • Understand the function of marketing • Describe the marketing mix • Explain traditional and new technology media channels • Understand the value of trends and fashion forecasting • Understand and use key terminology 30.1 INTRODUCTION The textile and fashion industry contributes to global and national economies through the purchasing of clothing. How do fashion designers and retailers decide what they will design? How do they know what will sell? The design development process is symbiotic with the marketing process and intelli- gence data of all kinds are gathered during the process to make sure that there is a market – a consumer, for the product. Here the process is explored in detail and with reference to new technologies as new ways of marketing fashion. 30.2 WHAT IS MARKETING? Marketing requires a company to think about the customer or potential customer of a particular product. The product needs to fit in with the needs and lifestyle of the customer and generate repeat purchases of the product by that customer. The need to make money is absolutely key. Marketers achieve this by using a range of ‘traditional’ approaches, for example, by using market researchers to gather ‘intelligence’ material and by the advertising of the product. Less obvious approaches are through the ‘branding’ of the product, the development of the product, the pricing of the product, the promotion of the product, the future possibilities of the product through forecasting and the distribution of the product (Easey, 2009).